Our Assistant Editor Lizzie Coan caught up with our Creative Director Michael Berthon to learn more about the creative process behind the rebrand.
Lizzie: First up, why did you feel that TwelfthMan were well-placed to take on a project like this?
Michael: Two reasons, really. Firstly, we work for a broad range of football clients - from governing bodies and leagues to football clubs and sponsors. We understand the different requirements of those organisations, so when we come to a wide-ranging branding project like this, we can find and propose solutions that work for all the stakeholders in the EFL ecosystem.
Secondly, the fact that we have such a range of teams in-house, from social to editorial to broadcast. It sounds like a cliché but it’s really true, we had so many different experts in the room when we were presenting the project – from writers who know English football inside out, to motion designers with a deep knowledge of broadcast match graphics.
Lizzie: You came up with the brand positioning, ‘the fabric of our lives,’ pretty early on. How important is brand positioning or narrative to a job like this?
Michael: Everything that we do creatively is underpinned by brand positioning. So, although the EFL’s existing mission and values were current and weren't going to change, we did feel it was important that we develop an engaging brand narrative, which is something they didn't have previously.
We worked very closely with the EFL comms team to make sure that the narrative aligned with their communication strategy. ‘The fabric of our lives’ really worked for us creatively – it expresses what the EFL does very well, which is to represent these incredibly diverse clubs, each of which sits at the heart of their community and genuinely are part of the fabric of fans’ lives.
Lizzie: This seems like quite a complex project. There are 72 clubs in the EFL, three leagues and two cups; was that a challenge when trying to develop a cohesive brand?
Michael: The complexity of the EFL's brand architecture was definitely the central challenge of this project, but also an opportunity. The solution that we came up with is to treat the Championship and Leagues One and Two as really quite a close family of brands, and then to address the cups as more distinct entities. The three Sky Bet EFL divisions are differentiated by individual colour palettes, but they share a consistent graphic language; then there's the cup brands (the Carabao Cup & Vertu Trophy) which have distinct decorative elements, using the trophies as the inspiration for those elements.
Lizzie: You made the decision to work with the existing logo rather than redesign it; why was that?
Michael: Quite early on in the process, through discussion with the client, we decided that the existing logo had acquired a level of recognition since its launch in 2016. Although we always like the challenge of designing a new logo, actually the strategic decision to retain the logo does provide that thread of consistency between the existing brand and the new work. That meant we could make bolder changes and developments elsewhere in the identity, because we had the logo as a point of consistency.
